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An interview with John Shalf, recipient of the 2025 Seymour Cray Award.John Shalf is Department Head for Computer Science at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and former Deputy Director for Hardware Technology on the U.S. Exascale Computing Project (ECP), whose leadership has shaped the architectural direction of high-performance computing in the United States.We connected with Dr. Shalf to discuss the convergence of HPC and hyperscale, lessons from public-private collaboration, and the future of computing architectures in the post-exascale era.As former Deputy Director for Hardware Technology on the DOE-led Exascale Computing Project (ECP), what were the key architectural and hardware innovations that emerged from the project, and how are they shaping current exascale systems?In the years leading up to the ECP, there was a notion of a set of swim lanes representing different paths that could get us to our project performance goals.  The three original swim lanes were manycore, wide-SIMD/vector, and GPU-accelerated.  Eventually the SIMD merged with manycore to become multicore with SIMD, which is prevalent in today’s CPU products.  GPU acceleration ultimately won in the US program whereas Japan adopted the SIMD/Multicore swim lane for their Fugaku system.  Indeed, the next generation of systems in Japan called Fugaku-Next are also adopting a hybrid GPU/CPU architecture as well.But there were also many important technologies that were initiated under the FastForward, DesignForward and Path Forward programs that have emerged in the mainstream (early versions of Arm SVE, NVLink for example) and continue to have impact in ways that we could never have predicted when we made the initial investments.  There were also some investments that didn’t make it such as multiple processor-in-memory and dataflow-like ideas, but we need to up-our game with our collaboration with industry for the next generation of systems beyond exascale.But the bigger picture that has emerged post exascale…

An Interview with Hai (Helen) Li, Marie Foote Reel E’46 Distinguished Professor and Department Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University, whose pioneering work in neuromorphic computing, AI hardware design, and memory architecture has helped shape the future of intelligent systems. As a leading researcher and educator, Dr. Li bridges academic excellence with industrial impact, advancing sustainable, trustworthy AI through innovations in hardware-software co-design and brain-inspired computing. We connected with Dr. Li to explore her journey, her vision for edge intelligence, and the collaborative ecosystems driving the next wave of AI hardware breakthroughs.Your research encompasses neuromorphic circuits and systems for brain-inspired computing. How do you envision the future of neuromorphic computing in mainstream applications?Neuromorphic computing draws inspiration directly from the structure and function of the human brain, representing a fundamental shift from traditional computing paradigms. Unlike conventional processors such as CPUs and GPUs that execute sequential or parallel instructions through fixed architectures, neuromorphic systems use networks of artificial neurons and synapses to process information in a distributed, event-driven, and highly energy-efficient manner. This brain-inspired design allows computation and memory to coexist, drastically reducing data movement, the major bottleneck in modern computing.The original vision of neuromorphic computing was to create machines capable of learning, adapting, and assisting human intelligence in daily life. Over the past decade, we’ve witnessed remarkable progress in AI, with large-scale models (LLM) achieving impressive capabilities in language, vision, and reasoning. However, these achievements come at a steep cost. Today’s AI systems require massive computational resources and consume extraordinary amounts of energy, training a single large model can use as much power as hundreds of homes. This model of growth is neither sustainable nor accessible for most individuals or organizations. To bring intelligence to the edge, where devices operate in real time and under strict energy…

As part of our quantum computing business skills series, we’re excited to invite you to attend a live session on Strategic Networking in the Quantum Ecosystem for Collective Success with Alaina Kanfer from UIUC NCSA.A version of this talk was presented at IEEE Quantum Week’s Exhibit Theater, and feedback was so positive that we wanted to bring this exciting presentation to our whole community.Key TakeawaysYou're developing a quantum technology with enormous potential—but it’s still emerging, and so is the market’s understanding. How can you communicate your excitement without overhyping? How can you encourage leaders to invest while being honest about quantum computing's limitations and timelines? Learning from science and network theory, as well as past tech revolutions and industry partnership programs, this talk describes how to build strategic partnerships that can help overcome barriers.This session provides tools for startups, researchers, and enterprise technologists to work together to advance the evolving quantum ecosystem.[caption id="attachment_502365" align="alignright" width="261"] Alaina Kanfer | UIUC NCSA[/caption]Speaker: Alaina KanferUniversity of Illinois, Urbana Champaign / NCSA Alaina Kanfer is Assistant Director for Strategic Partnership Development at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Driven by a passion for cutting-edge scientific discovery and its potential impact on society, she brings decades of expertise with fostering multidisciplinary collaborations, nurturing relationships with internal and external partners, and advancing technology ecosystems.  Her successes include building industrial-academic partnerships, securing technology research funding, facilitating public engagement, and helping to form new research groups. She earned her doctorate in Mathematical Social Science at the University of California, Irvine, specializing in social network analysis.Save your spot today and be part of the conversation!